‘It’s probably just stress, but I’ve been having these muscle spasms. I had a particularly strong one last night, so I called Ash – remember him? – and he arranged for me to see a neurologist this morning, Dr Hammond. We marvelled at the body’s capacity to somatise psychological states. “Those poor men who came back with shell shock from the First World War: truly astonishing cases. Neurologically speaking, it made no sense,” he said. Still, he arranged to fit in an MRI for me “just to tick that box”. That’s why I booked a table here because they gave me the last slot at the scanning centre around the corner.’

‘When do you get the results?’ asked Olivia.

‘Next Tuesday, after my very long weekend with Hunter, The Boss Who Never Sleeps. That starts on Thursday when my alarm goes off at five in the morning.’

‘It sounds like you’ve got enough alarms going off already,’ said Olivia.

‘If it isn’t stress, it might be nerve damage from that accident I had when we went cycling in Ireland.’

‘Oh god, that was terrible,’ Olivia explained to Francis. ‘I was behind Lucy and half-saw her flip over a gate further down the lane. At first it looked like a perfect somersault, and I almost expected to find her standing in the field, like a gymnast, with her feet together and her arms stretched out. Then I heard a scream and it was all ambulances and X-rays and crutches.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Francis, ‘that might well be it. How was the MRI? I’ve never had one.’

‘They were all very friendly and upbeat,’ said Lucy, ‘dressed as if they were about to go running, in sportswear and trainers, even though they spend most of their day filling in forms and pressing buttons. I felt rather calm and cosy in the scanner. When you work for Hunter it’s quite a treat to be able to lie down and do nothing. So, I just closed my eyes and lay in corpse pose.’

‘You make it sound like a spa treatment,’ said Olivia.

‘It was a bit on the high-tech side, but I was taking a spa approach to the earplugs, and the juddering and the squawking that sounds like an evacuation alarm but signals that you have to lie absolutely still. After a while I could just make out, over the muffled racket, a female voice saying, “We’re just going to pop you out of the scanner for a moment.” She told me they wanted to inject me with some contrast fluid. It felt cold, spreading all around my body as they “popped” me back in for another fifteen minutes.’

‘Do they always give people contrast fluid?’ asked Olivia.